Your letter of the 4. instant having gone by mistake to Montpellier in Vermont, has but lately come to hand. In my 85th. year, and under continued inroads on my health, I can not fail to be excused from undertaking a compliance with its request; for which indeed I could not otherwise be at all qualified, without a fuller knowlege of all the considerations which ought to influence the choice of your career of life. I can only therefore express my good wishes that this may be propitiously made, and that its success may be favored by an observance of those rules of moral & prudential obligation, which will occur to your own reflection and which belong to every condition & pursuit of life. With friendly respects